Banana Loaf

This might also be called the return of the housewife :-)
Towards the end of last week, over the weekend and on Monday, I was flat out writing job applications for a couple of jobs that were due on Monday night. Fingers crossed I get some bites on those :-) Because I was so busy I didn't really have time to do any baking or even much cooking. Fortunately Paul and I bought a slow cooker on Thursday with some of our wedding vouchers, so Paul used that to cook an awesome mince stew thing on Sunday (also did for Paul's lunch on Monday and dinner again last night - mmmmm). The recipe came from a slow cooker cook book we got for the wedding as well.

Anyway, so now that I'm not madly busy for a few days (unless some more great jobs come up), I've decided to do some more baking :-) On last night's list was a banana loaf. It turned out way better than the last one I did and is very yummy. I used proper self raising flour instead of guessing the combination of standard flour + baking power (put in too much baking powder last time). Plus I dropped the cooking time back by 5 mins as our oven cooks at the lesser end of the time scale (edmonds book says 45-55 mins - ours takes 45 mins :-) ).

Below are a couple of pics of the left overs of my creation. I started putting on some butter and then thought I'd take a pic for my blog :-) Actually the photos of the loaf don't look very appetising. But it's very yummy - you'll have to take my word for it. I modified the recipe a little bit by adding lots of cinnamon and a bit of vanilla essence to the banana when I was mashing it. Makes the taste a bit more interesting.



If you're thinking that I make a lot of banana somethings it's because my naughty husband has been forgetting to take bananas for lunch, so I end up using them for baking instead :-) Mmmmmm, what a shame ;-) ha ha

Random Purchases

Well in the spirit of updating my blog more often I thought I'd show you some random purchases Paul and I have made recently. [side note: recently is a pretty broad time frame and may consist of many months ;-) ]

BBQ cover:
This was a very well spent $12 or whatever it cost us. It gets very dusty out on the deck and the possums like climbing all over it at night. So now we don't have to clean the bbq before and after we use it - just after now :-)

New Fridge:
I love our new fridge! It has made life so much easier! This was bought with our wedding present money just before I lost my job, phew! Thanks guys! Our old one had a total volume of something like 220 litres - including the freezer. Our new one has about 520 litres - it's AWESOME! And can you believe that we have managed to fill it up. At least we have room for storing the top layer of the wedding cake. Ha ha! If you want some then you'll have to visit us around Dec 6th this year as we are going to cut it for out 1st anniversary.

Stovetop Espresso:
This is one of the best purchases we have ever made in my opinion! It was bought some David Jones vouchers we got for the wedding. Thanks guys! I'm sure mum will be much happier next she comes to visit as well because she can have some "real" coffee. With me currently at home it is getting a daily workout so is very well used :-) Thanks Janell and Alex for the idea!!

Cutlery Set:
Another item we bought with wedding money before I lost my job :-) We got it on sale too!!
We haven't broken it out yet as the cutlery needs to be hand washed. Well it says you can put it in the dishwasher, just not with aluminum etc. So we may as well hand wash them!

Knife Block:
Yet another item bought with wedding money, and on sale. I have waited a very long time to have decent knives. Paul and I only had one knife for cooking with before we got the block - very frustrating. The block is cool as it swivels around :-)

Photo Box:
This is a new purchase :-) We bought it on Thursday night with some vouchers Paul and I got from work. Paul got a $100 voucher for Christmas and I got the same when work got rid of me. The photo box contains all the "extra" official wedding photos.

I added a photo into the front of the box and took another pic of it :-)
Can you believe it only cost us $12.95 on special! Cheap aye! Now I just need to get a job so we rearrange our lounge and get a nice coffee table to put it on.

This is what the inside of the box looks like :-)
Now we just need to turn the photos into decent sized digital versions so we can do our own reprints and play around with the photos :-)

Photo Frame:
We also bought this on Thursday with out vouchers. I'm going to put some wedding photos in this once I get some reprints :-)

Making progess on the vege garden

Well after a long hot and busy summer, Paul has gotten back to work getting our vege garden into working order. Unfortunately as we left it so long, the weeds and grass grew back in the "beds". So Paul bought a garden hoe (I think that's what its called) a couple of weekends ago and is digging them out. Last weekend he cleared the first garden bed, and today he has been clearing the second.

Next we have the decide what type of soil we buy and when we get it delivered. The "good quality" soil suitable for planting veges etc costs about $68 a cubic metre plus delivery ($30 - $50). And we will probably need at least 4 cubic metres for the first 2 garden beds. Ouch - expensive!! But I can't wait till we can grown our own veges :-) That's when I can start contributing to the process again as I'm a little fragile to be doing heavy digging work. Very annoying really as I feel bad leaving it all to Paul.

Anyway here are a few pics I have taken of Paul's good work :-)

The dreaded semicolon

This entry will remind some people of another entry I wrote a while ago about the use of the apostrophe.

I am puzzled at the moment as MS Word keeps wanting to add semicolons into my sentences. I'm writing selection criteria statements as part of my job applications and I really don't see why Word needs to add semicolons. What purpose do they serve?! It made me think about it a bit more and I suddenly realised something - I have no idea when to use a semicolon! Shocking aye!!

Anyway, I should get back to my selection criteria statements as I have 2 due on Monday *sigh*

Official wedding photo albums

I was very excited when I went to the mailbox yesterday after to discover that the CD containing our official wedding photos had arrived. Now the photos are good enough quality to print out - but they're definitely good enough for putting up on Facebook etc :-)

If you would like to have a look then click on the following links to my Facebook albums. You don't need a Facebook account to view the albums using the links below :-)

Official Wedding Photos – Before
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5WD236T54XVM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - St Marys
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=36DZ2YVRP4WM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Group Photos
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=SZLYZ45YR3VM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Wedding Party at the Botanic Gardens
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5WLTPZS3U66M5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Wedding Party at Parliament
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=3ZFU2365QWVM5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos – Reception
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=3Z124WV5S45M5GBEX135XR

Official Wedding Photos - Black & White
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=583855394&k=5X1X3YURRXWM5GBEX135XR


Here are some of the official wedding photos - the rest can be seen by clicking on the links above and then opening each of the albums in facebook :-)

If anyone would like physical prints of the photos then let me know which ones, how many of each etc and I will organise them for you. From memory it will cost you $1 for standard 6x4 prints ranging up to $9 for enlargements.

Enjoy xoxo

Rosemary's Tea Biscuits

Well I don't have a lot going on in my life that's worth blogging about at the moment. However I always enjoy catching up on my friends blogs, even if it is only basic entries. So I thought I'd follow my friend Teresa's example and show you a photo of my latest baking effort.

As a kid I used to love baking and was quite good at it. In fact I was the only one mum would let in the kitchen as Marea had not yet discovered her talent for cooking (aka Marea could burn water) and the boys had no interest. So I remember baking biscuits and slices and telling James to go away when he would steal the uncooked mixture :-) te he

Anyway, I digress. So many years passed where Ange was all "anti girly stuff" and promptly lost interest in things like baking :-( However I am now a good housewife and am so sad that at night I find myself reading through my cookbooks thinking about what I might bake next :-) te he.

Well I'm pretty sure Paul hasn't been that stoked with my efforts so far. I've never been able to bake cakes or muffins and I can never get them to rise. I've made 2 banana cakes and a banana loaf in the past couple of months and while both tasted quite nice, they sure didn't rise very much :-) When I stayed with Shanan & Derilene before the wedding, Derilene suggested I use an electric beater for the whole thing to get more air into the mixture. Unfortuantely due to the whole losing my job thing, I haven't been able to buy one yet.

Next I wanted to bake some chocolate chips biscuits as I love them. However I didn't have some of the ingredients so I made "chocolate" biscuits instead. Well they went down like a cup of sick - they weren't very nice and a bit dry. We didn't even finish eating them!

But I have finally created something nice! Yesterday I went shopping and stocked up on baking essentials. Last night I made some "Rosemary's Tea Biscuits" out of my "Quick 'n' Easy" baking cookbook and they are yummy :-) Yay!! Finally.

Unfortunately it's hard to buy butter here that has measurements on the side. If you do find them then you don't really get them with 50g markings, only 100g. And those ones are more than twice the price of the blocks without markings. So I can't justify that kind of money at the moment. So when I get a job I am going to buy a set of kitchen scales so that I can properly measure my butter. Right now I just guess and that makes for pretty inaccurate butter levels :-) Because of this the biscuits are a bit crumbly - but they still taste good :-)

Anyway, here are the leftover biscuits that I baked. Paul and I had some for dessert last night and he took some for lunch today (oh, and I had one for morning tea too - mmmmm)


The recipe for anyone that cares is:
200g butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 cup custard powder
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt

Melt butter in saucepan large enough to hold all the ingredients. Remove
from heat, add sieved icing sugar and mix in well. Sift custard powder,
flour, baking powder and salt into saucepan. Mix well to combine.
Take tablespoons of mixture and roll into balls, put on greased baking tray. Flatten balls
slightly with a fork. Bake at 190 C for 13 minutes till slightly coloured.
Makes 20

Next up I'm thinking about baking either a carrot cake, because that is my favourite!!!! Or some ginger crunch in honour of my lovely mum, as that's her favourite (and brings back many happy childhood memories - my mum is the best cook in the whole world!!!). Or some tangy lemon slice as it tastes really nice! I just might have to bake something in honour of the browns coming to stay in April too :-)

But for now I am getting back to work as I have heaps to do!!!

Have a fab day!!

My gorgeous new nephew

So I am a proud aunty once again. My sister Marea had a beautiful baby boy on Wednesday afternoon :-) He was born on the 12th March at 1pm at Waikato Hospital and weighed 8lb 8oz.

Marea and Dan say:
His full name is Cedric James Patrick Verry
- Cedric is a Verry family name
- James is a Smith/Jensen family name
- and he's Patrick for Pat the Van, which was home when he was made :-)" [la la la la - too much info Marea :-)]

"Labour was 11 hours, emergency episiotomy, but Cedric not fazed. He eats sleeps and shits as he is supposed to."

When mum told me about the e word above, it was all a bit much and acted like a natural contraceptive ;-) ha ha. But when I told Paul that I wanted one too after seeing the pictures of Cedric for the first time (sooo cute) , Paul said that I had to get a job first :-) te he he :-)

So here are some photos of Cedric that I borrowed off Facebook.

I have 3 favourite photos so far and this one of Marea and Cedric is one of them.
You look so happy Marea :-) It makes me smile every time I see it!
Who would have thought the words "never again" had popped out of your mouth ;-)

This is my favourite photo - Cedric is very cute. You just want to cuddle him!
Very stink I don't get to cuddle him for 84 more days!!

The first family photo :-)

This is my 3rd favourite photo :-) Father and son.

Our new fence

Righto - a second blog entry for the day. Those on facebook will already know about our new fence - but this is for those that aren't on facebook. I went and visited Debz out in Caboolture on Wednesday and was able to get some photos off my camera while I was out there. Actually it was really nice going out there as 3 of the kids were at school and Isabelle was a quiet as a mouse, so we could just chat about random stuff :-) I really enjoyed it. Maybe I will get to do it a bit more now that I am an unemployed bum ;-) ha ha

Anyway, the fence! So we have 2 housing commission houses down our left boundary (like State Houses) that had new fences put up recently. Being housing commission it meant that the government paid for the whole new fence - so we got it for free. Yay!! A major bonus for us is that we got the "pretty" side of the fence too. One of the the neighbours has a shed right up no the boundary, so there wasn't enough room to put the boards on their side of the boundary - so we got the boards on our side, for the whole length of the fence. Sweet!! Plus the fence contractors removed all our old trees and shrubs along the boundary as well - for free!! That must have saved us SO much money! We got a stump ground up last year and it cost over a hundred dollars just for that. The contractors removed 2 trees, an old very large tree stump and quite a few hedges - so that is a lot of effort and a lot of grinding up as well :-)

It did take them a LONG time to do the fence (3 weeks) but the benefit of that was I got to see each step of putting the fence up. So now I reckon we could have a good shot at putting up one ourselves :-)

So here are a whole bunch of photos of the new fence.

The old fence:
This photo is at the back of the property and shows some of the trees that got removed.
The only ones we kept along the boundary were our citrus trees

The view along the boundary line from the back of the section looking to the front

Some of the shrubs that we had removed

This is a good comparison photo for when the fence is actually up. I hated the tall tree on the right and am very glad it has gone. It has some weird fruit on it with a sticky pink flesh that tasted awful. Only the birds, bats and possums liked them - and they dropped the sticky flesh and half eaten fruit all over our lawn!! Yuk!

This is at the front of the section and shows the annoying hedges that were removed

Those annoying hedges again. There was a huge tree stump in amongst them too that got removed! Yay!

The new fence process:

So they took down the old fence and left us with this delightful orange one for a whole weekend. It was meant to keep in the little yappy dog that lives next door. You never see if though so I think it is an indoor dog

The hedges and trees still needed to be removed at this point

One week in and finally the old trees and hedges are gone

The old poles being removed - a very hard job apparently. You can see how much section space we have regained from getting rid of those hedges though. Quite a lot!

It was very weird for a few days have absolutely no fence here!

And finally the new poles start going in. The fence is 1.8 metres high - so it required rather large poles. They used metal poles as the termites don't find those very tasty ;-) ha ha

The fence drops to 1.2 metres at the front of the section. It looks a bit strange to be honest.

We're into week 3 now and they finally started putting up the boards

But no boards at the back of the section - just the cross beams (or whatever the technical term is)

The remainder of the big wood pile that sat on our section for a few weeks - poor dead grass

The new fence:

And the final product
Looking towards the back of the section

Looking towards the front of the section.
I want to paint the fence, probably to match in with the house when we get that done this year. Then I want to put some in some nice plants along the fence line.

This is my favourite view of the fence
We need to plant a new citrus tree in the gap now. I'm thinking a lime or mum suggested a mandarin tree. We already have 1 orange (far left), 2 grapefruits (second on left and another out of the photo), a lemon (the one on the right in this photo) and some other one (not sure what it is - 3rd on left)

So there you have it. The saga of our new fence. And it was all for free! Delightful really.

The only downside as we see it is that we no longer get to chat to our neighbours. Plus it doesn't actually give you any privacy in the house since all of our houses are high set. But I like it anyway and once painted, it will make our section look much better. Once I get a job we're going to save up and get a nice front fence put in as well :-) Then maybe we can get a dog - yay!!